Basil Instinct (17 page)

I decided right then and there that I loved the word
whereabouts.

I declared to myself that I’d celebrate this discovery with a second croissant.

The rain came on steady, driving hard against my roof.

Without leaving the window seat, I went to work, calling each of the Miracolo staff to check whether any of them had “seen” (subtext: stolen) a red purse belonging to the late Georgia Georgette Georgina Payne. Since Nonna had already awak
ened them, I figured to cash in on their stumbling around their homes trying to figure out what in the name of holy roasted nuts was going on at their place of employment.

Jonathan remembered seeing a red purse when he was first introduced to Georgia, but that was it. Vera thought the purse had been yellow and hemp and really sort of crappy, right? That one, I told her, was mine. Oh, then, sorry (I could picture her looking sheepish), but no. Li Wei asked, “What purse?” I told him the red purse. Li Wei asked, “What red purse?” I told him Georgia’s red purse. And “Who’s Georgia?” pretty much ended our conversation.

L’Shondra remembered the red purse because it was the one Georgia had brought to our first Basic Cooking Skills class and she thought it was kickin’, but she hadn’t seen it at the restaurant, and oh, by the way, can she collect unemployment? Giancarlo rhapsodized about a red purse worn by a sexy spy for the Allies he once knew, but couldn’t help with Georgia’s.

That left Corabeth Potts.

And Choo Choo Bacigalupo. Who owed me. Big. I placed a call to the Callowhill Residential Institute for Behavioral Success, where I learned I was welcome to visit anytime today, and that the students in question were indeed in their cottages. Saturdays were
chore days. Not, I was betting, that many got done. Still, I’d go. And my mind slipped from thoughts of Georgia’s mysterious death and the disappearance—whereabouts—of her red purse, to thoughts about the familiar figures of my hit-and-run graffiti artists.

I placed my final call for the morning to my monumental cousin, Choo Choo. Who actually sounded like lugging bodies was a beauty treatment, he was so upbeat. I dampened his exuberance a bit when I forged right ahead and told him what I had in mind. It wasn’t until a little while later, as the rain started to let up and the sky brightened, that I got a call while I was slipping on a pair of gray cropped pants and a pink camisole.

“Eve?”

For a split second I had to admit to myself that I was hoping it was Joe Beck, even though the caller ID was unidentified.

“Yes?”

“It’s Mrs. Crawford.”

Like the sky, I brightened up. “Did you hear from Maria Pia, Mrs. C.? We’re closed, probably until Monday.” Even as I said it, I realized I had to call Dana Cahill and the regulars. Grief Week was about to get cut short. Shucks.

Georgia had been cut short.

“I heard,” she said. Then she went silent.

“Everything?” I probed. “All about the—death?”
Not only does Mrs. Crawford read between the lines, she reads between the pixels in the spaces between the lines. It was one of the things I especially liked about her.

“Yes.”

“So . . .” I was a little at a loss.

Her voice came back with some energy. “Let’s get together today, you and I.”

Was she inviting me out for tea? What? “Okay.” After my trip out to CRIBS, I’d have some time on my hands. “What’s up?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking.”

When other people say that, it’s usually along the lines of whether they want pizza or burgers for dinner. When Mrs. Bryce Crawford says it, you can bank on her having figured out crop circles or what happened to Amelia Earhart. So, I slowly replied, “Yes?”

“There’s no Georgia Payne.”

“Well,” I stated the obvious, “not anymore.”

“Not ever.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “So, Eve,” said Miracolo’s mysterious pianist, “meet me at Jolly’s Pub at three o’clock and I’ll tell you who she really was.”

*   *   *

Try having a normal day when you hear words like that. It’s like hearing (not that this happened) a
neighborhood brat blurt that he saw you and Ronnie Rosa lose your respective virginities in Ronnie’s brother Ricky’s bright blue Camaro. It hangs there. (I’m talking about the words.) It weighs. But my celebratory croissant had given me enough of a pastry fix for the morning that I was able to attend to other matters. The unbrushed teeth. The bug on the window, the slant of the maple flooring, and whether I needed a few more throw pillows for the window seat.

By the time Choo Choo pulled up outside, I was outfitted in black pants and an electric-blue, drapey jersey top (must have been thoughts of Ricky Rosa’s Camaro). I paired all that with a black Coach bag Maria Pia had passed on to me—never used—years ago and a pair of joke earrings I kept from a Halloween party thrown last year by Landon: dangling chains sporting little replicas of human bones.

I smudged on some eye shadow and stroked some red blush across my high cheekbones and slathered tomato-red lipstick across my lips. With a felt-tip pen I even added a couple of beauty marks, then I sprayed my hair into vampy place. This was just about as bad-ass as I get. Coach bag and stupid earrings. Fake beauty marks straight out of the 1940s.

I even wore heels.

Which I shined with black polish.

*   *   *

Then I locked my front door and ran down the two little steps to the wet grass. Choo Choo was leaning against a black limo he had borrowed from his seriously sketchy friend Junior Bevilacqua, who sat behind him in homeroom all throughout their school years. Junior now owned a “livery service,” and I hesitate to consider what he transports for a hefty fee.

Choo Choo himself went mostly for the stereotype, decked out in his usual fine black suit he wears at Miracolo, but today he’d added a black shirt, white tie—here he varied the classic look with a bolo tie, secured with a skull carved out of bone—and a hat. Not a fedora, like any self-respecting gangster would wear. A beret. A black one. The look was strangely sinister, so I loved it. Points for Choo Choo Bacigalupo.

We silently high-fived.

Then Choo Choo Bacigalupo—aka Don Lolo Dinardo—climbed into the backseat of one of Junior Bevilacqua’s limos. And I slipped into the driver’s seat. We were off.

10

A slave to any GPS, I got us to the Callowhill Residential Institute for Behavioral Success without incident. Don Lolo sat reflectively in the back, legs crossed, eyes narrowed with musings. CRIBS was west of town by about a half hour, set—I had found out online—on twelve acres of woodland. The drive up to the main building, the kind of staunch red-and-white colonial that gives nothing away, ran through an arbor of towering black locusts. The public face of Callowhill, I was guessing. I parked in front of the main entrance, figuring that when your wheels are a limo, no one asks questions.

Leaving Don Lolo behind his privacy glass in his bulletproof (well, probably not) vehicle, I went inside the main administration building long enough
to identify myself as Mitchell, Slash, and Corabeth’s teacher at the Quaker Hills Career Center. A short young receptionist with a slight tremble in her voice, hands, and head—understandable, from what I’d already seen of this crew—and large haunted eyes, had me sign in, which I did primly. More primly than my eye shadow and earrings warranted. I had a sudden bad moment wondering if (I stole a look at her name tag) Jenny Johnson was scared of me, not them. Should have taken off the earrings. She was too young to appreciate the Coach bag . . .

Choking out some vague directions to what she called “Cottages Three and Four,” Jenny let me go, and I skipped down the steps and back into the limo. We drove halfway around the semicircle and turned an easy right onto Alvin and Marcia Higgenbotham Drive. Big donors, no doubt. Naming rights, and all that. I found myself wondering whether half the problem for these kids was having to tell your buds you live on Alvin and Marcia Higgenbotham Drive. Can you blame them? I’d be flicking lit matches, too.

Brick “cottages” Three and Four, which stood next to each other, eased into sight. I drove slowly, since slow carries its own brand of menace, if you ask me. I parked silently, since silence carries its own brand of menace, if you ask me. I spotted
the three of them—the dreadlocked Mitchell, the suspiciously clean-cut Slash, and Corabeth, whose hair was screaming red again and rubber-banded back into its Shrek ’do. Apparently the lads were mocking her, which she thanked them for with a quick twist of Slash’s arm and Mitchell’s, well, private parts. I shot a look at Choo Choo, who seemed impressed the boys didn’t howl.

“Stay put for now,” I reminded him. To which he simply lowered his eyelids in assent.

Out of the limo I bounded over to Corabeth. The other two shrank back, but only a bit, since I was arriving so—so—unexpectedly. So full of energy. Maybe even a homework assignment. “Hey, how ya doin’, Miz Angelino,” quipped Slash, that wit. Mitchell elbowed him and they feinted at each other for no explainable reason.

“Fine, boys, just fine,” I smiled benignly.

Slash ventured: “Lookin’ some kind of fine”—and he added, with a leer that was supposed to make me tingle, I guess, “
Eve.
” This overstepping led to more horseplay from the merry pranksters.

I flashed them as much of a hundred-watt Mary Poppins manic grin as I dared, so as to lull them but not lose their interest. “Catch y’all in a minute, just gonna have a word with Corabeth here.”

I motioned to Corabeth, who angled herself off the bench with a quizzical look on a great face
that was way too unappreciated by herself and everybody else. She fell in beside me and we walked across the grass toward—nothing important. More colonial brick buildings. More Alvin and Marcia, no doubt. Her hands were stuffed boyishly into her pockets and she looked unhappy. Out of earshot of the Hardy Boys, I stopped in my tracks, and set a hand on her big arm.

“Georgia’s dead, Corabeth.”

Her face got even bigger. “Georgia from class? Georgia from the restaurant?”

I nodded. She didn’t ask what happened. Either she knew, or—more likely—in her world she always assumed the worst. “Miracolo’s closed while the police gather evidence.”

Now it was her turn to nod. I guess she lived in a world where evidence got gathered on a fairly regular basis. Finally, she worked up the courage to say, “I really liked working for you.”

“You were really, really good.” I sounded every bit as enthusiastic as I felt. She shot me a look like I was pulling her leg, which was impossible either literally or figuratively, and I laughed a little. “You’ve got great hands and a wonderful manner, Corabeth. I want you to stay on.” I figured we’d review the dress and grooming code later, but for the moment the big girl was shuffling around in a way that looked a lot like the Cha-cha Slide. I took it for joy.

When I asked her about Georgia’s purse, she got a look of intense concentration on her face. “Red thing about yay big with a chain handle and a pearl clasp?”

Even I hadn’t noticed that much about it.
Red
was just about as far as my powers of observation went. “That’d be the one,” I guessed.

Whereupon Corabeth rounded on the dreadlocks and tongue stud back at the bench. “You shit heads stole Georgia’s purse?” she bellowed. I think there was a chance anyone pumping gas at the Marathon station a mile away heard her. Corabeth whirled to face me. “They been fooling with a fancy date book and an iPod in a purple case for like the last day. Now I know where I seen that date book before—class on Wednesday, Miss Eve.” I watched as she headed like a riled bear toward her fellow CRIBSmates. Over her shoulder, she yelled back to me, “Georgia had it out.”

Slash and Mitchell decided to stand their ground, aided by a glint of something that emerged from the skanky pocket of one of them. My heart started racing. At that moment, the rear door to Junior Bevilacqua’s limo opened wide, right in front of the boys, who got jumpy, trying to get the lay of the land that was rumbling under their sneakered feet.

Out slid Choo Choo. As I closed in on the little
group, I was dying at the thought that Corabeth, in her big friendly way, would call out something to him, another Miracolo staffer, and blow the whole plan. “Corabeth, Corabeth!” I hollered. She pulled up short—I swear I felt Earth slow in its rotation—and gave the little scene the once-over. Then she turned to me with a grin only I could see. We were good.

Choo Choo oozed silently over to Mitchell and Slash, who could only glower at him like five-year-olds ready to carry on because some bully kicked over their sand castle. “Who the hell are you, Fatso?” sputtered Slash. I didn’t know whether to laugh or quake in my heels. Could the kid not read the situation? Had he never seen the tollbooth scene from
The Godfather
? In all of his experience was a horse’s head always attached to the rest of the horse? Were these two purse-snatching graffiti-artist firebugs really that unacquainted with popular culture?

Without answering, Choo Choo flicked open his suit jacket, conveniently revealing a shoulder-holstered gun I knew he had bought at the same costume shop where I got my chains-and-bones earrings. We went to the same party. Slipping a hand inside his jacket, while the boys were still trying to find their swagga, Choo Choo pulled out a roll of Mentos. Mitchell and Slash were just
starting to work up a look that said the limo guy was not only fat but downright silly, when Choo Choo’s arm seemed to get in touch with its inner mongoose and he had Slash Kipperman off his twitchy feet in a neck grip.

My turn. I stepped up and tried channeling a little bit of a big-hair Jersey girl. All I needed was the gum. “Boys,” I said broadly, “this is Don Lolo Dinardo.” I waxed positively waxy. “Legitimate businessman. Part-owner of a landfill in the Pine Barrens. Security consultant for local businesses.”

With a dexterity I never knew he had, my cousin Choo Choo let the little turd go and snagged the blade, folded it, and tossed it into the limo before any of us knew what was happening. But Slash didn’t get far, maybe because he was trying to catch his breath, and Choo Choo hauled them both close to him by the bunched-up crew necks of their T-shirts.